Ill Will (37 page)

No, his shoes weren’t that quiet. I could hear his steps behind me now that he wasn’t trying to be concealed.

I put the money on the table.

The piles of bills got his attention. I doubt he was even aware of what his expression revealed—money was his true interest, his one real passion. Everything—and everyone—else was just a means to an end.

This time I didn’t even count, but let him. I was more interested in watching his expression as the bills slide through his hands.

“You’re doing quite well,” he said when he finished. “That’s almost five thousand.”

“It does include what was left over from the last time,” I said. “I’ve been hustling. My sorority sisters have been buying like hotcakes. Guess we’re all hitting the age when we have to be better about taking care of ourselves.”

“Look, I’m going to do you a favor. Two thousand will cover the costs of a full order of product. I think you’re ready to go for the high end of sales.” He slid enough bills to cover that amount to his side of the table. “If you let me take another two—if you can spare it—I’ll tell my contacts that I already have a down payment on your sister’s treatment. If I vouch for you and show some money, it’ll almost guarantee that you’ll get something from the next shipment.”

He kept his hand on the remaining bills.

I swallowed as if this was a hard decision for Debbie. That kind of money would mean something for her. Hell, it was a fair chunk of change for Micky Knight. “Okay,” I said with another swallow, as if this was hard. “Thank you for doing this for me. For us.”

“I’m doing this for you.” He looked directly at me the perfect smile on his face. He kept his hand on the money. “I know this is hard. My mother died of breast cancer, so I can feel what you’re going through.”

I dabbed my eyes as if I was about to cry. He slid an additional two thousand dollars to his side of the table, leaving the smallest pile for Debbie.

“I’m sorry, I know this is hard for you,” he said. The money now safely in his grasp, he put an arm around Debbie’s shoulder.

I leaned my head into him, smelling his expensive aftershave.

Like him, I’d heard the footsteps on the outside stairs.

In best heroine fashion, I laid my hand against his manly chest.

Vincent came through the door.

Grant jumped up as if we were doing more than just a comforting arm around the shoulder. “I thought you were going to wait out in the parking lot,” he growled.

Even in the dim light, I could see the red in Vincent’s face.

“Sorry, I…uh…sorry. I knew you were in a hurry and didn’t want to keep you…waiting,” the poor puppy stammered out. “I’ll wait downstairs.” He hastily left the room.

I stood up. “Thank you, Grant. You’ve been very kind to me.” Steeling myself, I leaned into him and kissed his cheek. “But I know you’re also a very busy man, and I don’t want to take advantage of your kindness.”

He smiled at me, perhaps even a genuine smile at me not being a clinging type of woman who mired him down.

He scooped the money into his briefcase, then took my hand and led me down the stairs.

“I wish I weren’t so busy,” he said as we got to the parking lot.

“It’s part of who you are. I don’t want you to change.”

I just want you in jail.

I smiled at Vincent as he loaded my little car with more of Nature’s Beautiful Gift. Grant helped again, insisting that it wasn’t something a woman like me should do.

I let them. It would save me a dry-cleaning bill for Debbie’s pink wardrobe.

Grant again kissed me good-bye on the cheek, this time resting a hand on my waist and letting it slide toward my breast as if he had permission to touch there, only stopping as if suddenly remembering that we were in a parking lot.

Vincent was staring.

I got in my car and drove away as quickly as I could.

Back at my office the first thing I did was strip off the pink clothes and take a shower. The smell of Grant’s expensive aftershave was causing me to gag.

Lydia blew me off.
This week won’t work
, she texted, the coward.
Maybe next week. I’ll let you know.

I met Rafe in another parking lot up on Carrolton, one that was still desolate. I claimed it was to update him, but it was mostly to dump the piles of NBG boxes on him. All the weight was affecting my gas mileage.

Grant was truly a busy man. I heard nothing from him.

“Maybe you should call him,” Rafe called me to suggest, the first hint his Dallas clients weren’t bottomless pits of money.

“He’s playing with me, let him play a bit longer.” I would be happy to never see Grant Walters again in my life. His encore might be having Vincent walk in on us actually doing it, and I wanted no part of that.

I had to spend a month in Alabama tracking down heirs. Okay, it was just a week, but because it was Alabama, it felt like a month.

Cordelia again had a needle in her arm and chemicals in her body. This time she made it home before throwing up.

In the evening, when I was taking the garbage out, Torbin came over carrying a big pot.

“Crawfish bisque,” he said. “It’s the best apology I could make.”

It’s a hard dish to make; you have to stuff the crawfish heads and cook for a while.

I put my arms around him and gave him a hug. I didn’t take the pot.

“Thanks, but…this isn’t the right time.”

“You’re turning down my crawfish bisque?”

“Right now, yeah. It was a chemo day. Cordelia can’t do much more than a few spoonfuls of white rice. Even strong smells can set her off.”

He put the pot down on the sidewalk. “Bad timing on my part. I’ve missed you—both of you.”

“I missed you, too. Both of you. Only the timing is bad. Everything else…is okay.”

“Andy’s hand looks fine. I think he kind of likes the scar. He certainly uses it as an excuse not to chop veggies.”

“Did you get the job?”

“No, they were nice, but it was between me and someone with fifty years of HIV experience and who speaks Spanish. I’ll keep looking. Andy now has work with coverage, so we’re much better off. Maybe it’s time for drag queens to unionize.”

“Maybe it is. I could hire you. You could work under my license, join one of the professional associations and get insurance through them. It costs, but it’s a group rate.”

“Drag queen detective. Has a nice ring to it. Let me cogitate on it.”

“Cordelia has good days between when they actually pump the stuff in her. She can probably eat most anything that’s not fried in about a week.”

“I’ll make it again,” Torbin said as he picked up the pot.

“No, you won’t. We’re going to all the restaurants we’ve been meaning to go to. Join us.”

He smiled at me. “Done. Let me pick the next one. You can’t even know which one it is.”

I gave him another hug and agreed, then went back inside to see if Cordelia was up for a little rice.

The next day, I took Rafe’s advice and had Debbie call Grant. It went to his voice mail. By the end of the day he hadn’t called back.

So much for special.

The day ended and it was time to go home to a quiet evening of cats in the lap, a roasted chicken—light on the pepper for Cordelia—for dinner and early to bed.

The next morning as I was fumbling to put my key into the lock at my office, my cell phone rang. I dropped the keys on the ground and left them there to answer my phone.

But it wasn’t the phone now in my hand ringing. I quickly dug through my briefcase to get Debbie’s phone, barely managing to answer before it went to voice mail.

Maybe I was special enough to get a call the next morning.

“This Debbie?” It was a woman’s voice. Nope, still not special.

“Yes, yes, this is. Who is this?”

“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is that I have information for you. Get ready to jot this down.” She wasn’t impolite, her voice sounded professionally warm. But she wasn’t concerned where I was or what I was doing—I needed to write down the information right now.

“Let me find a pen,” I said as scrabbled in my briefcase for a pen and scratch paper.

“Tonight at eight thirty.”

“Got it,” I said. I finally located a pen and grabbed the first blank piece of paper that came to hand. I hoped it wasn’t my Entergy bill.

She gave me an address in New Orleans East, off Lake Forest Boulevard. “You’re going to have to park on the street, the lot still has a chain link fence around it, but you can get through at one end,” she instructed. “This is for your sister, right? She needs to be there and you need to bring the money. You have to pay up front before you see the doctor.”

“Okay, we’ll be there.”

“You can come with her, but only she can go in, got that?”

“Yes, of course. Who are you? What’s the doctor’s name?”

She ignored my questions, repeated the address and reminded me to bring the money, and hung up.

If there weren’t enough glaring warning lights, this was just another. No legit doctor would operate this way. I suspected it was either someone who lost his license for selling too many diet pills or, more likely, someone in a white coat who had a vague idea of how to take blood pressure. Theater is largely props and suspension of disbelief. Call someone a doctor, do a few doctor things. Someone badly needs this charade to be real, and they believe enough to hand over their life savings.

I scooped my keys off the sidewalk just as a large black truck cruised by.

His was wrecked.

He could have got a new one by now.

I jammed my hand into my briefcase for my gun.

The truck kept going and turned the corner.

I hurriedly stuck my key in the door, opened it, just as quickly locked it again when I was on the other side and ran up the stairs.

I called both Joanne and Danny to see if there was any update on Dudley. Neither was available. I left messages.

Then I called Rafe.

“Lights, action, camera,” he said.

“Easy for you to say.”

“True. Do you trust me enough for me to come to your office? Or should we meet somewhere in public for me to wire you?”

“You think they won’t check for a wire?”

“I assume they will. This is why you’ll be wearing a state-of-the-art one.”

“Why don’t we meet at your office?”

“Because it’s in Dallas and we’d have to meet at my hotel room.”

Given that choice, I started to tell him my address, but he cut me off.

“I’m out front right now.” Of course he’d know where I worked. He was smart enough to add, “If now’s not a good time, I can come back.”

I had been debating whether or not to say I had a client and wasn’t free. He just edged over not being blown off. “It’s a fine time, come on up.”

Of course, his coming up meant my going down to unlock the door.

“Not much to steal in here,” he commented on the austere lobby—which was basically enough room to fit two people and the stairs and the junked-up hallway that led to the back door.

As we chugged up those very stairs, I explained about Dudley. It was a brief explanation as by about the third flight, talking becomes punctuated by obvious breathing.

“The cops really think he might come after you?” Rafe asked just as we were on the final flight.

“The cops don’t know that he won’t,” I answered. I waited until I was unlocking my door to continue. “He’s an addict. Probably meth, from the look of his mouth. He could be crazy enough to think that if he kills me, his legal problems will go away.”

“So we should be watching out for this guy as well?”

I didn’t want to be baby-sat. “The police probably already have him in custody.” I explained about the wreck and his need for pain meds.

“Damn, I forgot to scan the news feed to check up on you.”

Enough of this. “Okay, so what are we doing tonight?”

He pulled a thick envelope out of his briefcase. “Seven thousand,” he said as he tossed it on my desk. “Tell them it was all you could scrape up. That you can have more next week. The more contact we have, the more we’re likely to catch Grant Walters there.”

He pulled out another envelope, not as thick. “Five hundred for you up front. You get another thousand after tonight. More if we need more of your time. Bonus of ten thousand if we catch Walters.”

I put the envelope in a desk drawer. Then I showed him my wardrobe for tonight. The rhinestone jeans would make another appearance; Debbie was the kind of girl who had to wear clothes more than once. Plus the new pastel pink sweater and hot pink jacket.

“That should make it easy to spot you.”

“I’m playing a character,” I told him. “If it was me, I’d be in black leather.”

“My kind of woman,” he muttered while groping in his briefcase.

“Not if you knew me better,” I muttered back.